


i'd make sure the light defeated the dark

by skywalking-across-the-galaxy (BadWolfGirl01)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Ahsoka Tano Lives, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Episode: s02e21-22 Twilight of the Apprentice, F/M, Fic Exchange, Fluff, How Do I Tag, Hurt/Comfort, May the Fourth Exchange 2019, Post-Episode: s02e21-22 Twilight of the Apprentice, probably too many metaphors and similes, she lives in a slightly different way from canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2020-01-11 01:54:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18420429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BadWolfGirl01/pseuds/skywalking-across-the-galaxy
Summary: “Ahsoka.”She knows that voice, the way it whispers her name like a prayer, like desperation wrapped up in a word, like she never thought she’d hear her name said again, because no one, no one ever said her name like her Master.Ahsoka freezes, looks away from Ezra standing in the Phantom’s entrance, from the heavy red crystalline stone slowly closing, from her last hope of escape - twists around to face Anakin.[or: Ahsoka survives Malachor]





	i'd make sure the light defeated the dark

**Author's Note:**

  * For [countessofbiscuit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/countessofbiscuit/gifts).



> i was originally intending to do something different for this, but after rewatching Twilight of the Apprentice, my muse latched onto this idea. i hope you enjoy it, biscuit!
> 
> title is from "you are the reason" by Calum Scott  
> "If I could turn back the clock  
> I'd make sure the light defeated the dark  
> I'd spend every hour, of every day  
> Keeping you safe"

_ “Ahsoka.” _

She  _ knows _ that voice, the way it whispers her name like a prayer, like desperation wrapped up in a word, like she never thought she’d hear her name said again, because no one, no one ever said her name like her Master.

Ahsoka  _ freezes, _ looks away from Ezra standing in the  _ Phantom’s _ entrance, from the heavy red crystalline stone slowly closing, from her last hope of escape - twists around to face Anakin.

Because this  _ is _ Anakin, staring out at her from one Sith-gold eye, pleading and desperate and struggling and she can’t, she can’t leave him, not again, now now. “Ahsoka.”

“I won’t leave you,” she says, pushes her shoulders back, lifts her chin and meets Anakin’s eye, the line of his scar just visible beneath the cracked and scored edge of his helmet. “Not this time.”

For a long moment, she thinks it  _ works _ \- the Sith temple is trembling around her and beneath her feet, purple lightning arcing through the prongs of the black obelisk, and Anakin is just  _ looking _ at her, so close, and she thinks of him as she walked away from the Jedi Order, leaving him alone. He  _ needed her _ and she left him behind, and she can’t- she  _ won’t _ do it again. There’s still  _ Anakin _ left after all, still traces of her old Master, and he needs her now, so-

Something changes in his one visible eye, and her heart falls to the floor before he speaks again, because she  _ knows. _

Vader is back.

_ (Anakin Skywalker was weak, _ he says, and his voice and the cadence are all wrong, and she knows, she knows,  _ so I destroyed him.) _

“Then you will die,” he says, and ignites his lightsaber. The red stains the visible bit of his face crimson like fresh blood.

Ezra shouts her name, and she spins (ignites her sabers and crosses them behind her back to block Vader’s strike), calls on the Force and pushes the young padawan away. He needs to  _ go, _ to help Kanan - he can’t save her now. This is her choice. To stay with Anakin, like she should’ve, because what if she could’ve changed this all? (She needed to leave, for herself, but Anakin- he needed her.)

_ I’m sorry, Ezra. _

The heavy stone slams to the ground and the raw  _ power _ swells around her as she blocks another flurry of strikes from Vader, and then the lightning turns blinding and coalesces into a furious explosion.

The last thing Ahsoka sees is the memory of  _ concern _ on Rex’s face as he says  _ I should have ordered you to take me along. _

~

Twenty-four hours after he lost his Jedi, Rex’s comm pings.

It wakes him up from sleeping off the most alcohol he’s had in a long time - his head is  _ pounding _ and his throat dry and his mouth tastes like something died in it, and Ahsoka-

And Ahsoka is still dead.

He almost doesn’t answer his comm, because it’s probably Sato or Syndulla needing him somewhere for something, and he came back for Kanan but he  _ stayed _ for  _ her, _ and now she’s gone (and he’s the last one, alone, he outlived his Jedi and he outlived his  _ vode _ and now he’s outlived his  _ cyare _ too, and he doesn’t even have Cody anymore to help with the ache), and he wants a gods-damned  _ break. _

Just one more day to miss her.

His comm goes off again and with a heavy sigh Rex cracks open one eye enough to swipe the kriffing thing off the table by his (their) bed, hits the button and says, “Rex here.” His voice is too hoarse.

Maybe it’s from the crying.

There’s no answer, just a rhythmic pattern of beeps - it takes a moment for him to make sense of it (he blames the hangover), but when he does something inside him  _ stops. _

It’s a distress signal, from back during the war. The one that signifies  _ medical emergency. _

He has no proof. But he  _ knows, _ somehow, that it’s her. His ‘Soka. Who else could it be? Who else would even  _ know _ those codes, these days - they’d had to invent new codes for the Rebellion, apparently, since the Empire took and twisted most of the GAR standards he’d known. 

So it’s  _ got _ to be his Jedi, and a distress signal means she’s  _ alive, _ means-

Means he has to get to Command.

Rex shoves himself upright (swallows back the nausea and grits his teeth against the headache) and reaches for the pieces of his armor. Tugs on his boots, snaps on greaves and bracers and cuirass, buckles on his gunbelt and tucks his bucket under his arm and leaves his (their) room behind. 

The whole way, the distress signal beeps softly at him, a steady, reassuring sound.  _ She’s alive. _

(He shouldn’t think like that, he shouldn’t just  _ assume, _ because if it’s not her - which he doesn’t know, not for sure, this could be someone else - if it’s not her, it’s going to hurt so much more, because then he has no choice but to- to accept he’s lost her, too.)

Syndulla is sitting at a table in the newly constructed mess, a mug of caf and a plate of breakfast in front of her; Rex gets himself his own caf (because he needs it) and no food (because the smell of it turns his stomach -  _ gods _ he drank too much) and slides onto the bench across from her.

She nods at his wristcomm absently, says, “What’s the beeping?”

Rex takes a deep breath. “A distress signal. It’s Clone War-era code for a medical emergency. I think it’s Ahsoka.”

Syndulla closes her eyes, looks  _ pained, _ and he can guess why - he’s acting like Fives had, after the Citadel infiltration, all desperate to prove that Echo was  _ alive, _ if they would just go look for him, he could find him- But Rex  _ knows, _ knows that he’s right (he shouldn’t let himself feel so certain).

“Alright, Rex,” she says, heavily. “Commander Sato won’t want to spare the resources, but if you’re sure about this-”

“I am,” he says, firmly.

Syndulla nods. “Then we’ll take the  _ Ghost _ and see if we can find her.”

He doesn’t think the Twi’lek really believes him. It says something, though, that she’s willing to humor him anyway (or maybe she just knows he’ll take a ship and go, whether he has help or not). “Thank you, sir,” he says, takes a scalding swallow of his caf and rubs at his head. “It means a lot.”

“If Ahsoka  _ is _ alive, we can’t just leave her there,” Syndulla says, leaning forward on her elbows. “Just give me a minute to let Commander Sato know and get Zeb, Sabine, and Ezra, and we’ll meet you at the  _ Ghost.” _

Rex nods, pushes himself to his feet, swipes his caf off the table and takes it with him - he’ll need it. “I’ll get started tracking the signal,” he says, takes another drink before marching out of the mess.

_ Medical emergency, _ the distress code says. That means they have to hurry - it’ll be a few hours in hyperspace before they even get to Malachor, at the least, and  _ medical emergency  _ could mean anything from ‘please have the med droid ready’ to ‘bleeding out with hours left to live’.

Gods, he’s thinking too much.

Syndulla walks into the  _ Ghost’s _ cockpit a few minutes after he settles in to link his wristcomm to the main computer, the rest of her crew (minus Kanan, of course, the Jedi’s still in medical) trailing behind her.

“The signal’s coming from Malachor,” he says without preamble, and everyone straightens, tenses.

“We better get going, then,” Sabine says.

She’s a good kid. 

It doesn’t take long for the ship to get into hyperspace - Syndulla’s apparently already briefed everyone on their mission, since no one questions why they’re returning to the planet Kanan and Ezra barely escaped from with their lives. Sabine and Zeb both are giving him  _ looks, _ not-quite-pitying, but close enough to the same thing when he’s seen this behavior as much as he has. Usually it’s him on their side, trying not to say the wrong thing to a brother after a bad battle.

He’s never been naive enough to believe the Force would actually let him-

Well.

(Except for after- after Fives, his  _ vod’ika, _ when he’d gone to Cody and tried to explain about the chips and everything Fives had tried to tell them, how he thought his  _ vod’ika _ was right - and Cody had just  _ looked _ at him, had said  _ Rex, I know losing him is hard, but you have to stay focused - your battalion needs you.) _

He sits at the couch around the dejarik table, starts the game up and sets the CPU to its highest setting, lets the strategy pull his mind away from Fives and Echo and Cody and Ahsoka, because in lieu of a training sim this is the best he’s got. He ignores Ezra and Sabine perching on the couch near him, watching, just analyzes the game board and picks out the computer’s strategy like it’s a Separatist battlefield and a droid commander and makes his moves.

He wins the first game, and the second, and by the third Zeb and Syndulla are watching too, and he ignores them all - doesn’t say anything, just focuses intently on the game in front of him.

“That’s amazing,” Sabine says, after he wins the third game.

Rex shrugs one shoulder, resets the board. “It’s tactics,” he says, roughly, makes his first move. “We were programmed for it, and the Command classes went pretty in-depth.”

“Wow,” Ezra says.

“Picked up more from General Skywalker,” he adds, counters the computer’s move almost absently. “He was reckless but brilliant, and he taught me to think creatively.”

_ Kriff, _ he’s gotten distracted - he makes a wrong move and nearly loses the entire game, has to spend his next three turns repairing the damage. There’s a few minutes of quiet, during which he manages to salvage the game (although it’s fifty-fifty if he’ll be able to win, now), before Ezra says, slowly, “Ahsoka said-” He cuts off, a moment, swallows. “Ahsoka said that Vader is- was her old Master.”

“Yes,” Rex says, quietly. She’d told him that. 

There’s not much else to say, really.

On his wrist, the distress signal still beeps, softly.  _ She’s alive. She’s alive. She’s alive. _

She has to be.

(He’s lost too many, he can’t- he doesn’t want to lose her too.)

 

They come out of hyperspace over Malachor a few hours later, as Rex is about to checkmate the computer on yet another game of dejarik. He abandons the game immediately upon feeling the tell-tale lurch, grabs his bucket and tucks it under his arm and gets to his feet, makes his way towards the cockpit.

Syndulla is busy adjusting the controls to pull the  _ Ghost _ into orbit around the planet. “Chopper and I will stay here,” she says. “Zeb, Ezra, Sabine, you go with Rex. Let’s bring Ahsoka home.”

There’s still that  _ look _ on her face, but Rex ignores it (the way he should’ve ignored Cody, should’ve pushed harder, because maybe he could’ve still done something about the chips if he’d just pushed harder-), just nods and jams his bucket on his head and strides for the  _ Phantom. _ They’ve spent too much time talking already, he has to get her.

_ Medical emergency. _

Ezra flies them down to what’s left of the blackened, twisted pyramid that he says was the Sith temple, lands the  _ Phantom _ on top of it - the only stable ground in the whole place, it appears. “This is where we were when she- got trapped with Vader,” he explains, quietly.

Rex nods. “Fan out,” he says, stepping out of the small shuttle. “She’ll have gotten herself somewhere sheltered, hidden, where she can see people coming. I’m gonna try to track the signal.” It might not work, now that he’s this close to the source, but he has to try.

He has to find her.

Ezra and Sabine go off one way, Zeb another, and Rex adjusts his comm, follows the distress signal down a series of hewn steps and into a-

It looks like a forest, almost, but one of stone statues and petrified people, dark and eerie, twisted, some fallen over - there are  _ lightsabers _ half-buried in the ground here and there, a few scattered masks he vaguely recognizes from the few times he’d been inside the Jedi Temple - Temple guards, he thinks. Almost no light filters in through the fragile surface above his head, although the gaping hole above the remainder of the Sith temple lets in enough of the weak sunlight to see by. It must be near the planet’s night-cycle.

“This place is miserable,” he mutters to himself, stepping over what looks like an arm, the body it belongs to nowhere in sight. “No wonder the Sith liked it.”

A cold gust of wind blows through the place, raising the hairs on the back of his neck, almost like the planet is listening to him (and that’s banthashit, or should be, but after the stories he’d heard of Mortis he’s never been able to totally shake the idea off, and in any case this planet has an almost  _ aura _ of darkness - maybe it’s Darkness - to it); he glances back over his shoulder, sees nothing but a statue that looks like it’s looking at him - creepy fekking place - and when he turns around and the wind cuts out, everything is silent.

It takes half a second to notice that the distress signal’s cut out, too.

No.  _ No! _ Shit, no, wait- Rex swears under his breath, shifts furiously through the frequencies it might’ve changed to, comes back to his own, and there’s still nothing, and oh  _ little gods _ does that mean- If he took too long getting here and now she’s  _ dead, gods, _ he can’t-

Deep breaths. All the rock in the place could be making the signal unpredictable; he knows Ahsoka, knows the kind of place she’d find to hide herself when hurt, he can find her without the help of a comm.

He faces back in the direction the signal had been leading him, toggles his HUD to show a thermal readout of the place, looks for zones matching Ahsoka’s normal body temperatures - there, not too far away, a zone that looks promising. He blinks the thermal screen away and eyes the area he’d marked; it’s higher up and there’s multiple slabs of debris from the explosion crashed at awkward angles.

It looks like somewhere she’d hide.

There’s only one real ‘path’ up to stable ground, one he doesn’t think even a Jedi who’s been through an explosion could make it up, but there’s a smear of blood on one of the statues and it looks fresh, so he grits his teeth and pushes the rest of the way up.

His comm is still silent.

If she’s dead-

_ No. _

She  _ isn’t. _ (She can’t be. Not his ‘Soka.)

Rex ducks under the edge of a fallen pillar of rock and skirts around a chunk of debris (oddly red-colored, engraved, almost crystalline in structure), and nearly trips over a too-familiar boot.

“Ahsoka!”

She’s pulled herself into a niche in the rock, he notes, rushing up to her and dropping to his knees near her shoulders - her back is to her cover and one hand is limp on her saber hilt, and there’s blood still welling up from torn skin and burns making a patchwork of black across her montrals and headtails and arms, but her chest is rising and falling (too shallow) and she opens her eyes when he says her name.

She’s alive.

“Kriffing hells,” he mutters, gets his arms carefully around her shoulders and tugs her into his lap, braces her so he can pull his bucket off and set it next to him. “I’ve got you, ‘Soka.”

His armor is hard and poky and uncomfortable (he knows this from years of her telling him), but she fumbles one hand up to latch onto the front of his cuirass and tilts her face into his chest anyway. Little  _ gods. _

“What’d you get yourself stuck here for?” he chides, gently, running his thumb across her cheekbone.

“Anakin,” she rasps, closing her eyes and tilting into the touch. “I couldn’t leave him.”

Of-kriffing-course.

As much as Rex loved General Skywalker, when he was himself, there are times he wants to punch the man. Especially these days. It’s a shame about the suit, he probably wouldn’t even feel Rex’s fist. “Well,” he says, shifting his hand to trace one of the lines of color on her montral, one that’s not burned, “he’s gone, now, so it’s time to go home.”

“‘Kay,” Ahsoka says, nearly limp in his arms, and Rex swallows hard, hooks his bucket to his belt and gets his other arm under her knees, lifts her against his chest and pushes to his feet in the same motion.

“No more running off without me,” he tells her, sternly, starts the trek back to the  _ Phantom. _ “Got it,  _ cyar’ika?” _

“Hm,” she hums, which isn’t really much of an answer, but he’s not sure she’s  _ able _ to give more of one, right now. “No… promises.”

Ah, yep, there it is. “‘Soka…”

“You- would’ve died,” she says, voice getting stronger for a minute. “Maul was here.”

_ That’s exactly why you needed me, _ he doesn’t say. Nor does he tell her he would’ve been fine, because really? Maul and Vader (kriff him) and, from Ezra’s account, three Inquisitors aren’t odds he’s sure he could’ve beaten. But he should’ve  _ been here, _ on her six, where he should be. Protecting her. And keeping her from being an utter  _ di’kut _ over a man who doesn’t deserve her loyalty anymore. “Still,” he says, makes his way carefully down the slope. “No more missions for a while, okay? You need to recover.”

“Okay,” his Jedi says, quiet, closes those blue eyes he’s always loved so much. He slips just a bit, on the loose shale beneath his feet, jolting her (painfully, he’s sure, although he tries to keep her as still as he can), and she whines and grabs harder at his cuirass.

“Sorry,  _ cyar’ika,” _ he says, shifts her weight in his arms and stepping onto more solid, flat ground. “You should rest, we’ll get you to a medbay as soon as we can.”

“Okay,” she says again, softer, nearly inaudible, head dropping against his upper arm.

He has to fight off a spike of fear when she goes quiet  _ (medical emergency, _ and she’s injured and a part of him is still terrified he was too late-), has to too-frequently check to confirm she’s still breathing, but he makes it back to the  _ Phantom _ and carries her inside, sits down on one of the seats in the back and adjusts her so her head is on one shoulder.

“Zeb, Sabine,” he says, softly, into his comm, “I have her. Come on back.”

~

Ahsoka wakes up slowly, memories trickling back like blood, sluggish and heavy, and she groans, tries to force her eyes open. It takes too long, too much energy, but finally she catches a glimpse of a durasteel-grey ceiling, of steady white lights - too bright, she has to close her eyes again against the glare.

Everything  _ hurts. _

“She’s due more painkillers, hang on,” someone says, there’s the pinprick of a hypo in her neck, and a handful of heartbeats later the pain fades away.

Thank the Force.

She remembers, now, the fight,  _ Anakin  _ (oh Force, Anakin), the explosion, crawling away to hide… and nothing, for a while, just waiting and hoping that her distress signal would reach far enough.

And then Rex.

Rex!

Ahsoka forces her eyes open again, tilts her head with an effort to one side, but there’s no one there. Where…?

“Hey, there you are,” she hears, and she flops her head in the other direction (ow, that hurts a bit, why…?), sees Rex sitting next to her bed in a chair that looks  _ horrible. _ “Medics said i had to stay here until you got some meds.”

That explains why he’s in the dumb chair. “C’mere,” she manages, lifts one hand to beckon to him - and catches sight of the bandages. Oh.

“You’ll be alright, ‘Soka,” Rex says, standing up and moving over to sit next to her on the bed. “You’ve got some pretty bad burns, but the medics say they’ll heal up just fine.”

Ahsoka tilts her forehead into Rex’s leg experimentally (maybe he’ll lay down and be close), and he huffs a chuckle and traces one hand over the tip of one of her montrals. “Anakin was there,” she says, slowly. “For a minute, it was  _ him, _ Rex.”

“Okay,” Rex says. He sounds grumpy. “I’m sorry,  _ cyar’ika.” _

“Hmm,” she hums, closes her eyes. “Me too. He- said my name.”

“I’m sorry,” Rex repeats.

She nuzzles into his leg, says, “Do you still want to punch him?”

“... yes,” he admits, and she laughs, although that sends a dull ache pulsing through the haze of painkillers. “But you have to admit, ‘Soka, I have a very compelling reason.”

She hums again, lets out a long breath. “I still miss him.”

“I know.” Rex scoots down so he’s laying next to her,  _ finally, _ tugs her into his arms, and she curls up against his chest, even though the movement hurts. “I do too,  _ cyar’ika. _ But I would’ve missed you more, if you hadn’t come back. I’ve lost a lot of brothers, I- don’t want to lose you too. Not when I just got you back.”

She knows what he’s asking - what he’s been asking her, quietly and not outright, since he joined the Rebellion. For her to step back from everything, to let the network of spies she’s recruited be the main intel-gatherers, to let others handle the dangerous missions she’s been doing herself for so many years now. To  _ rest, _ take a break, and- and be with him.

Not to leave the Rebellion, of course, never that - he’d never ask her to abandon this fight, this cause. Not when they both believe in it so strongly. Just to settle down, a bit, to stop taking so many risks.

He’s lost a lot, she thinks. Anakin, the 501st, Cody (who they really need to get back - maybe she can get one of her contacts to find out where he was stationed) - and now almost her.

She can make this sacrifice for him. He’s worth it, after all.

So, “Okay,” she says, pressing her montrals against his chest, where she can hear his heart beating, steady and reassuring.

“Okay?” Rex presses kisses to the tips of her montrals, hums a bit, low in his throat.

“Okay,” she agrees. “Less missions.”

It feels… freeing.

“Less missions, more sleeping,” he insists, and she laughs, traces a finger absently over his side.

“Fine,” she huffs. “More sleeping. But not too much,” she adds, smiling slyly up at him, and he laughs, long and clear.

“Not too much,” he agrees. “But you need sleep right now,  _ ner’jetii.” _

“I just woke  _ up,” _ she grumbles, although she  _ is _ tired - the painkillers make her lazy and lethargic and her body is complaining, saying she needs the rest to heal. “Stay with me?”

“Of course,” he says, immediately. “Always.”

“Good,” she says. “Love you, Rex.”

“Love you too, ‘Soka. Shut up and go to sleep.”

She huffs out a laugh, snuggles up closer, and lets her eyes fall closed.

Always, he says.

She thinks it’s time she made the same promise in return.


End file.
